New Years Resolutions 2016

So I've been shocking at this blog thing.  There's no escaping that but I made a decision last week that this year would be a year of me actually being a real community member as a software engineer. To try and keep me on the right track I decided to basically have some career resolutions but framed up nicely for the calendar year.

This isn't a full new year means new me type deal but rather just taking a few further steps to get out there and broaden my horizons. 

The last time I really engaged with the idea of the blog was when I was feeling pretty isolated working as a Buld Release Engineer and trying to foster a DevOps culture in the office. For a reasonable period of that time I was a singleton role in the office (with lovely colleagues in Boston of course) and I think that really led for me to try and reach out and talk to people. I was also absolutely head over heels in love with Chef (I still am sorry) and couldn't shut up about it. I think it accounts for like 90% of my stack overflow interactions as well.

I decided that hell I'm still pretty passionate about software engineering and a lot of the people and technologies I work with so with that in mind lets get straight into the resolutions

The Resolutions

1) Blog at least 12 times

For someone with none in 3 years this may seem ambitious but I have come to realise that the career move I have made into Engineering management in the past year is of interest to people especially because I know I personally have struggled with many parts of that move and not being that individual technical contributor in the same way.  Also I'm managing a specialist team in an area I have little experience  (UI Development) and there my crutch of having exposure to technologies and challenges isn't there that can be quite scary and exposing like when you forgot your towel and need to dash from the bathroom to get one knowing full well the curtains aren't closed (quick shout out to anyone who has copped such an eyeful whilst walking in Hillsborough park)

I don't think those struggles are uncommon but there's a lot that can be said on the role of a manager whilst wanting to have autonomous empowered teams.

Also as I was part of the effort to found a technology blog at work this year it's a little shabby that I don't really have a personal blog.

2) Read 12 books related to my job

This effort has been partly inspired by a book I'm currently reading called The Software Craftsman by Sandro Mancuso 

I am lucky enough to work somewhere that has a subscription to safari online so access to a lot of titles shouldn't be an issue. 

Some of the books may have a management or soft skills slant as well but the aim is 12 books with some relevance to a career in software development.

I really want to introduce a book club in work this year so I'm hoping to start small and get a few colleagues interested in specific books.

Take 12 online courses

So there are so many excellent resources for free courses that this should be readily doable. 

Mainly I'll be looking to do something I've mo experience in rather than brushing up on anything currently. 

I have experience with a number of the providers including edx  (functional and saas) to pluralsight (not free but luckily my work has some accounts). This will probably be a mix of shorter technology specific courses to some more building block pieces like those from edx. 

I think there's a real embarrassment of riches when it comes to online courses at the minute so I'm going to me a concerted effort to fill my boots this year.

I'm quite weak on front end technologies so that's of particular interest. 

Make 12 contributions to the open source community

The hard one. I use a lot of open source software and yet my contribution back has been poor. I'm not alone on that front and I know there's a lot of people who like me are willing but maybe unsure as to where to start?

That's what I'm going to find the toughest but I'm going to try and use it as an opportunity to help out, support projects I like and also develop some of my own skills as I do it. For example I've written a few pet projects in go but I'm very much a newbie at it so I'm hoping to get to the point of being able to contribute to some go projects this year. It's unlikely that I'll get a chance to use it professionally this year so this seems like a win win scenario.

Hopefully no one that's seen my code is reading this as otherwise they may say the most noble contribution I can make is standing back and making a financial contribution ; )

Take part in 12 community events

So this is meet ups and conferences and tech talks and hackathons and all that goodness. I dabble a bit but not very often. I went to the Lead Dev Conference with a colleague (Blog post he wrote about it here) and was part of a resilience tech talk last year in Belfast. I keep circling local events and then making excuses not to go and that's pretty short sighted as normally when I do go I really enjoy hearing other people's war stories of using certain tools or facing certain issues.

Software can be quite an isolating place to work until you realise that there is a whole community of people who get excited about the same things.

Getting Started 

So if anyone has any suggestions on any of the above sections or would like to get involved too let me know. You can also catch me on Twitter on @DundrumMuscles 

I should also make a resolution to have a prettier blog as well